Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has set a Sept. 16 execution date for convicted rapist and murderer Gregory Wilson but held off signing two other death warrants because there is a shortage of a key drug used in executions, the Associated Press reports. Wilson was sentenced to die for his part in the 1987 kidnapping and murder of Deborah Pooley. Requests for execution dates are pending for Ralph Baze, convicted of killing a sheriff and a deputy in 1992, and Robert Carl Foley, convicted in 1993 and 1994 of killing six people in two incidents.
Beshear said the state has enough sodium thiopental for just one execution. Kentucky’s stock expires Oct. 1; a new supply of the drug isn’t expected until early 2011. Wilson’s execution would be the first since Kentucky readopted its lethal injection protocol in May, seven months after the Kentucky Supreme Court halted all executions, ruling there were problems with the way the protocol was put in place.